Monday was a busy day; copy must be prepared for the engraver; proofs of the current edition of the magazine had to be checked up; some important French fashion plates for which she was responsible had temporarily disappeared and must be unearthed. At four-thirty she was free to take tea with Mrs. Denver, who immediately thereafter bore her off to a “movie” and dinner. Not until nine o’clock was she able to pursue her new train of thought. And even when she was at liberty to indulge in her habit of introspection she found herself experiencing a certain reluctance, an unexpected shyness. Time was needed to brood on this secret with its promise of happiness; this means of salvation from the problems of loneliness and weakness which beset her. For since the departure of Roger she frequently felt herself less assured; it would be a relief to have some one on whom to lean; some one who would be glad to shield and advise her,—and love her! This last thought seemed to her marvellous. She said to herself again and again: “Anthony loves me, I know it. Think of it, he loves me!” Her face and neck were covered with blushes; she was like a young girl on the eve of falling in love, and indeed she herself was entering on that experience for the first time. From the very beginning she had liked Anthony, liked him as she had never liked Roger—for himself, for his sincerity, for his fierce pride, for his poverty, for his honest, frantic love. “And now,” she said solemnly, “I believe I’m going to love him; I believe I love him already.”
There were many things to be considered. His poverty,—but she no longer cared about that; insensibly her association with Rachel Salting, her knowledge of Rachel’s plans and her high flouting of poverty had worked their influence. It would be fun, fun to begin at the beginning, to save and scrape and mend. Like Rachel she would do no washing and ironing, she would keep herself dainty and unworn, but everything else, everything else she would do. Cook—and she could cook; she had her blessed mother to thank for that. For a moment she was home again on Opal Street, getting Monday dinner, laughing with Virginia about Mrs. Henrietta Jones. There they were at the table, her pretty mother, her father with his fine, black face—his black face, she had forgotten that.
Colour,—here the old problem came up again. Restlessly she paced the room, a smouldering cigarette in her fingers. She rarely smoked but sometimes the insensate little cylinder gave her a sense of companionship. Colour, colour, she had forgotten it. Now what should she do,—tell Anthony? He was Spanish, she remembered, or no,—since he came from Brazil he was probably Portuguese, a member of a race devoid, notoriously devoid of prejudice against black blood. But Anthony had lived in America long enough to become inoculated; had he ever spoken about coloured people, had the subject ever come up? Wait a minute, there was Miss Powell; she remembered now that his conduct towards the young coloured woman had always been conspicuously correct; he had placed chairs for her, opened doors, set up easels; once the three of them had walked out of Cooper Union together and Anthony had carefully helped Miss Powell on a car, removing his hat with that slightly foreign gesture which she admired so much. And so far as she knew he had never used any of Roger’s cruelly slighting expressions; the terms “coon”, “nigger”, “darky” had never crossed his lips. Clearly he had no conscious feeling against her people—“my people” she repeated, smiling, and wondered herself which people she meant, for she belonged to two races, and to one far more conspicuously than the other. Why, Anthony had even attended the Van Meier lecture. And she wondered what Van Meier would say if she presented her problem to him. He had no brief, she knew, against intermarriage, though, because of the high social forfeit levied, he did not advocate its practice in America. For a moment she considered going to him and asking his advice. But she was afraid that he would speak to her about racial pride and she did not want to think of that. Life, life was what she was struggling for, the right to live and be happy. And once more her mother’s dictum flashed into her mind. “Life is more important than colour.” This, she told herself, was an omen, her mother was watching over her, guiding her. And, burying her face in her hands, she fell on her knees and wept and prayed.
Virginia sent a gay missive: “As soon as you left that wretch of a Sara told me that she had let you in on the great news. I wish I’d known it, I’d have spoken to you about it there in the hall; only there was so much to explain. But now you know the main facts, and I can wait until I see you to tell you the rest. But isn’t it all wonderful? Angela, I do believe I’m almost the happiest girl alive!
“It’s too lovely here. Edna is very kind and you know I always did like Pennsylvania country. Matthew is out almost every day. He tells me it renews his youth to come and talk about old times,—anyone to hear us reminiscing, starting every other sentence with ‘do you remember——?’ would think that we averaged at least ninety years apiece. It won’t pique your vanity, will it, if I tell you that he seems to have recovered entirely from his old crush on you? Maybe he was just in love with the family and didn’t know it.
“We go into Philadelphia every day or two. The city has changed amazingly. But after the hit or miss method of New York society there is something very restful and safe about this tight organization of ‘old Philadelphians’. In the short time I’ve been here I’ve met loads of first families, people whose names we only knew when we were children. But they all seem to remember father and mother; they all begin: ‘My dear, I remember when Junius Murray——’ I meet all these people, old and young, through Matthew, who seems to have become quite the beau here and goes everywhere. He really is different. Even his hair in some mysterious way is changed. Not that I ever minded; only he’s so awfully nice that I just would like all the nice things of the world added unto him. We were talking the other day about the wedding, and I was thinking what a really distinguished appearance he would make. Dear old Matt, I’m glad I put off marriage until he could cut a fine figure. Write me, darling, if you feel like it, but don’t expect to hear much from me. I’m so happy I can’t keep still long enough to write. The minute I get back to New York though we’ll have such a talk as never was.”
Mrs. Denver was growing happier; New York was redeeming itself and revealing all the riches which she had suspected lay hidden in its warehouses. Through one letter of introduction forced into her unwilling hands by an officious acquaintance on her departure from Butte she had gained an entrée into that kindest and happiest of New York’s varied groups, the band of writers, columnists, publishers and critics. The lady from the middle West had no literary pretensions herself, but she liked people who had them and lived up to them; she kept abreast of literary gossip, read Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and Mercury. As she was fairly young, dainty, wealthy and generous and no grinder of axes, she was caught up and whirled right along into the galaxy of teas, luncheons, theatre parties and “barbecues” which formed the relaxations of this joyous crowd. Soon she was overwhelmed, with more invitations than she could accept; to those which she did consider she always couched her acceptance in the same terms. “Yes I’ll come if I may bring my young friend, Angèle Mory, along with me. She’s a painter whom you’ll all be glad to know some day.” Angela’s chance kindness to her in her days of loneliness and boredom had not fallen on barren ground.
Chapter IV
SOMETIMES this thought confronted her: “Perhaps Anthony no longer needs me; has forgotten me.” And at the bare idea her heart would contract with an actual, palpable movement. For by now he was representing not only surcease from loneliness but peace and security; a place not merely in society but in the world at large. Marriage appeared, too, in a different light. Until she had met Roger she had not thought much about the institution except as an adventure in romance or as a means to an end; in her case the method of achieving the kind of existence which once had been her ideal. But now she saw it as an end in itself; for women certainly; the only, the most desirable and natural end. From this state a gifted, an ambitious woman might reach forth and acquit herself well in any activity. But marriage must be there first, the foundation, th
e substratum. Of course there were undoubtedly women who, like men, took love and marriage as the sauce of existence and their intellectual interests as the main dish. Witness for instance, Paulette. Now that she came to think of it, Paulette might vary her lovers but she never varied in the manifestation of her restless, clever mental energy. At no time did she allow her “love-life”, as the psycho-analyst termed it, to interfere with her mental interests. Indeed she made no scruple of furthering these same interests by her unusual and pervasive sex charm. But this was Paulette, a remarkable personage, a woman apart. But for most women there must be the safety, the assurance of relationship that marriage affords. Indeed, most women must be able to say as did men, “You are mine,” not merely, “I am yours.”
A certain scorching humility thrust itself upon her. In all her manifestations of human relationships, how selfish she had been! She had left Virginia, she had taken up with Roger to further her own interests. For a brief interval she had perhaps loved Roger with the tumultuous, heady passion of hot, untried youth. But again when, this subsiding, she had tried to introduce a note of idealism, it had been with the thought of saving her own soul. She thought of her day in the park with Anthony, his uncomplaining acceptance of her verdict; his wistfully grateful: “I almost touched happiness”. How easily she might have made him happy if she had turned her thoughts to his needs. But she had never thought of that; she had been too intent always on happiness for herself. Her father, her mother and Jinny had always given and she had always taken. Why was that? Jinny had sighed: “Perhaps you have more white blood than Negro in your veins.” Perhaps this selfishness was what the possession of white blood meant; the ultimate definition of Nordic Supremacy.
Then she remembered that Anthony was white and, bewildered, she ceased trying to cogitate, to unravel, decipher, evaluate. She was lonely, she loved. She meant to find a companion; she meant to be beloved.
She must act.
None of her new friends was acquainted with Anthony. Ralph Ashley in response to a tentative question could not recall ever having seen him. The time was August, consequently he could not be at the school. Telephone books revealed nothing. “Lost in a great city!” she told herself and smiled at the cheap novel flavour of the phrase. She sent her thoughts fluttering back to the last time she had really seen Anthony, to their last intimate conversation. They had met that day after she had cut Jinny; she remembered, smiling now in her superior knowledge, the slight panic which she had experienced at his finding her in a ’bus in Harlem. There had been some chaffing about tea and he had given her his address and she had put it,—where? It was not in her address book. A feverish search through her little desk revealed it in the pages of her prayer book, the one which she had used as a child. This she considered a good omen. The bit of paper was crinkled and blurred but she was able to make out an address on One Hundred and Fourteenth Street. Suppose he were no longer there! She could not brook the thought of another night of uncertainty; it was ten o’clock but she mounted a ’bus, rode up to One Hundred and Fourteenth and Seventh Avenue. Her heart beat so loudly as she turned the corner,—it seemed as though the inhabitants of the rather shabby block hearing that human dynamo would throng their windows. The street, like many others in New York, possessed the pseudo elegance and impressiveness which comes from an equipment of brown stone houses with their massive fronts, their ostentatious regularity and simplicity, but a second glance revealed its down-at-heel condition; gaping windows disclosed the pitiful smallness of the rooms that crouched behind the pretentious outsides. There was something faintly humorous, ironical, about being cooped up in these deceptive palaces; according to one’s temperament one might laugh or weep at the thought of how these structures, the product of human energy could yet cramp, imprison, even ruin the very activity which had created them.
Angela found her number, mounted the steps, sought in the dim, square hall feverishly among the names in the bells. Sullivan, Brown, Hendrickson, Sanchez,—and underneath the name of Sanchez on the same card, five small, neat characters in Anthony’s inimitably clear printing—Cross. She almost fainted with the relief of it. Her fingers stole to the bell,—perhaps her onetime fellow-student was up in his room now,—how strange that this bit of gutta percha and its attendant wires should bridge all the extent of time and space that had so long lain between them! But she could not push it; Anthony, she was sure, was real enough, close enough to the heart of living to refuse to be shocked by any mere breach of the conventionalities. Even so, however, to seek at eleven o’clock at night and without preliminary warning admission to the rooms of a man whom one has not noticed for a year, was, as he himself would have put it, “a bit thick”.
The little note which she sent was a model of demureness and propriety. “Dear Anthony,” it read, “Do you remember my promising to ask you in for tea the next time I made a batch of cookies? Well, to-morrow at 5.30 will be the next time. Do come!”
He had changed; her interested, searching eyes descried it in a moment. Always grave, always austere, always responsible, there was now in his manner an imponderable yet perceptible increment of each quality. But this was not all; his old familiar tortured look had left him; a peace, a quality of poise hovered about him, the composure which is achieved either by the attainment or by the relinquishment of the heart’s desire. There is really very little difference, since each implies the cessation of effort.
All this passed rapidly through Angela’s mind. Aloud she said: “How do, Anthony? you’re really looking awfully well. It’s nice to see you again.”
“It’s nice to see you,” he replied. Certainly there was nothing remarkable about their conversation. After the bantering, the jests and allusions which she had been used to hearing at the Sandburgs,—compared with the snappy jargon of Mrs. Denver’s “crowd” this was trivial, not to say banal. She burst out laughing. Anthony raised his eyebrows.
“What’s so funny? Is it a secret joke?”
“No,—only I’ve been thinking hard about you for a long time.” She made a daring stroke. “Presumably you’ve thought occasionally about me. Yet when we meet we sit up like a dandy and a dowager with white kid gloves on and exchange comments on our appearances. I suppose the next step in order would be to talk about the weather. Have you had much rain up in One Hundred and Fourteenth Street, Mr. Cross?”
Some of his poise forsook him. The pervasive peacefulness that sat so palpably upon him deserted him like a rended veil. “You’ve been thinking about me for a long time? Just how long?”
“I couldn’t tell you when it began.” She ventured another bold stroke. “But you’ve been in the back of my mind,—oh for ages, ages.”
The poise, the composure, the peace were all fled now. Hastily, recklessly he set down his glass of tea, came and towered over her. She bit her lips to hide their trembling. Oh he was dear, dearer than she had ever imagined, so transparent, so honest. Who was she to deserve him?
His face quivered. He should never have come near this girl! As suddenly as he had left his chair he returned to it, settled himself comfortably and picked up his glass. “I’ve been away from you so long I had forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?”
“Forgotten how dangerous you are. Forgotten how a woman like you plays with poor fools like me. Why did you send for me? To set me dancing once more to your tune?”
His bitterness surprised and frightened her. “Anthony, Anthony don’t talk like that! I sent for you because I wanted to see you, wanted to talk to my old friend.”
Appeased, he lounged back in the famous and unique easy chair, lit a cigarette. She brought out some of her sketches, displayed her note-book. He was especially interested in the “Fourteenth Street Types”, was pleased with the portrait of her mother. “She doesn’t look like you, though I can see you probably have her hair and that pearly tint of her skin. But you must have got your nose from your father. You know all the rest of your face,” he dwelt on her features dreamily, “your lip
s, your eyes, your curly lashes are so deliciously feminine. But that straight nose of yours betokens strength.” The faded, yet striking photograph lay within reach. He picked it up, studying it thoughtfully. “What a beautiful woman;—all woman I should say. Did she have much effect on your life?”
“N-no, I can’t say she did.” She remembered those Saturday excursions and their adventures in “passing”, so harmless, yet so far-reaching. “Oh yes, in one respect she influenced me greatly, changed my whole life.”
He nodded, gazing moodily at the picture. “My mother certainly affected me.”
Angela started to say glibly, “She made you what you are to-day”; but a glance at his brooding countenance made her think better of it.
“What’s this?” He had turned again to the sketch book and was poring upon a mass of lightly indicated figures passing apparently in review before the tall, cloaked form of a woman, thin to emaciation, her hands on her bony hips, slightly bent forward, laughing uproariously yet with a certain chilling malevolence. “I can’t make it out.”
With something shamefaced in her manner she took it from him. “I’m not sure yet whether I’ll develop it. I,—it’s an idea that has slowly taken possession of me since I’ve been in New York. The tall woman is Life and the idea is that she laughs at us; laughs at the poor people who fall into the traps which she sets for us.”
Sorrow set its seal on his face as perceptibly as though it had been stamped there. He came closer. “You’ve found that out too? If I could have managed it you would never have known it. I wanted so to keep it from you.” His manner suddenly changed. “I must go. This afternoon has been perfect; I can’t thank you enough,—but I’m not coming again.”
“Not coming again! What nonsense! Why, why ever not? Now, Anthony, don’t begin that vow business. To-day has been perfect, marvellous. You don’t suppose I’m going to let my friend go when I’m really just discovering him!”
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